Golem in My Glovebox (29 page)

As if thinking about it could make it happen, I peeked inside a building that was once a gift shop, and a figure rushed me out of the darkness, knocking me to the ground. The wind went out of me in a whoosh, and Gris went flying from my shoulder.

A teenaged boy, filthy and wide-eyed, climbed off of me and ran down the boardwalk. I sat up, feeling the back of my head where it had banged into the wooden boards. The sand had cushioned it, mostly. I wasn’t bleeding. Go, me.

I climbed to my feet and looked around. I couldn’t find Gris, and my heart beat faster. “Gris?” I spun around, scanning the area.

“Here,” he said. His voice was muffled and coming from the edge of the boardwalk. One small hand waved from the sand. The rest of him was wedged under a board.

I wiggled him loose and checked him over for breaks. He seemed to be whole and functioning. “You okay?”

He brushed sand from his head. “Yeah. You?”

I nodded and put him back on my shoulder. “We need a better plan.”

“No need,” said a deep voice behind me. “We’re going to have fun today. That’s the plan.”

I turned to face the speaker and found a large man with curly blond hair and thick lips grinning down at me. Large didn’t really describe him. Huge? No. A freaking buffalo. Yes. That.

For all his size, he was fast. I tried to take a step back, and he snatched my wrist in a blur. Before I had time to protest, he jerked my arm and dragged me down the boardwalk.

I tried to dig my heels in, but I was no more difficult for him to handle than a kitten grabbing the carpet with her claws. My legs were shorter than his, so I had to trot to keep up with him.

“Let go of me!” I said punching him in the arm. “I’m not here to have fun.”

He stopped so suddenly I bumped my nose against his upper arm. He blinked at me, confused. “Why would you come here if you didn’t want to have fun with Bill? You said we would ride the Ferris wheel together and eat ice cream.” His lower lip quivered.

I looked at Gris for help, then realized I must’ve lost him again when Buffalo Bill had yanked my arm. “The Ferris wheel is broken, Bill.”

He glanced down the walkway to another section of boardwalk jutting out toward the sea. The Ferris wheel clearly lay on its side in a pile of rubble. Bill, apparently, saw no such thing.

“People are riding it right now. It’s not broken. Come on, Zoey. Don’t be afraid. I’ll be with you.”

Hearing my name on his lips chilled me. I wasn’t wearing a nametag that said “Hi, my name is Zoey!” The only way this woolly mammoth could know my name was if Katy had sent him to keep me busy.

Which meant she really was somewhere nearby.

I sighed. The only way to get to her would be to let this play out until either she made him let me go or I could slip away.

“Alright, Bill. I’ll ride it once. Then we’ll go get ice cream.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Bill was a few graham crackers short of a s’more.

Katy worked with emotions. She could force people to do things based on a manipulation of their feelings. Make them want to hold hands and beat the hell out of Riley. Make them want to take in a little girl out of nowhere and drive cross-country with her. Make them want to kill themselves.

She couldn’t put pictures in people’s minds. That was something Bill did to himself all on his own. He genuinely saw the amusement park shiny and new and filled with people. As we walked, he waved and nodded at folks only he could see. From time to time, he had us weave left or right, as if making his way through a tangled crowd.

He took us to a tiny building and shoved a dollar through the boarded-over window. After a minute, he took non-existent tickets from the non-existent attendant, and pulled me along toward the flattened Ferris wheel.

Some of the wooden poles that indicated the ride queue remained, and he went to the end of it to wait.

I tried to glance around for Gris without seeming suspicious. Wherever he was, I didn’t spot him. I did have an idea, though. Maybe Bill’s delusions were suggestible. Perhaps I could speed up this game.

“Whooo,” I said, wiping my brow. “It’s so hot today.”

Bill nodded and examined the sky. He plucked at his shirt and fanned himself. “It’s a scorcher!” Within a minute, sweat dampened his shirt.

It was probably about seventy-two degrees out. With the wind blowing off the water, the temperature was even lower.

I tried again. “Wow. An hour-and-a-half wait? I can’t believe how busy it is today.”

Bill’s smile wavered, then crawled back up his doughy face. “It’s worth it, though, Zoey. We’ll wait as long as it takes.” He folded his arms over his chest and settled in to wait.

I craned my neck to gaze up at the empty sky. “Looks like the ride’s stuck.”

He followed my gaze and watched for a moment, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Nope. They were just stopped for loading. See? There it goes again.”

The guy was seriously delusional. I felt my keys digging into my hip from my pocket and realized my phone wasn’t with them anymore. I’d lost it somewhere along the way during the struggle.

Well
,
shit.
No backup.
No golem.
No phone.
And you left your purse in the car.
Way to isolate yourself for the kill
,
Zoey.

If this were a choose-your-own-adventure, I’d have flipped back through the pages to redo some of my choices.

After a few minutes, Bill stepped forward three steps, dragging me along with him. “See? The line’s moving fine. It’ll be our turn soon.”

The only sound around us was the crash of the waves and cries of seagulls. From time to time, as we stepped forward in the queue, my foot scraped against the sand-covered boards. Other than that, the amusement park was a dead thing, silent and rotting around us.

I never should have suggested to Bill that it was hot outside. His body odor cranked up a few notches. He smelled like pickled crazy soaked in a vinegar-and-madness marinade and sprinkled with freshly grated out-of-his-freaking-mind. I fanned my face and turned my body as far away as I could with my arm stuck in his vice grip.

A child’s laughter drifted from the main boardwalk.

“Bitch,” I said under my breath. I couldn’t see anyone, and didn’t expect to.

If I throat-punched a kid who was really over a hundred years old, was that child abuse? Abuse of the elderly? Common sense?

Every few minutes, we moved forward in the invisible line. And at equally regular intervals, Katy’s obnoxious giggles blew in on the wind. After awhile, I stopped trying to catch her at it. I wouldn’t be able to see her unless she wanted to be seen. Better to ignore her. If nothing else, maybe she’d be irritated by the lack of attention.

The laughter grew louder and more frequent, the less interest I gave it. But I refused to turn around. I would not give in.

Bill tugged my arm, and we stepped forward another few steps.

“Yo, Bill!” A new voice, closer, louder and male, came from behind us.

A second male voice joined the first. “Hey! Did you save us a spot?”

Bill turned, taking me with him. Three men of varying size strode toward us, grins plastered across their faces. They all wore wetsuits, as if they’d come from surfing.

“I thought you guys weren’t coming,” Bill said. He pulled me closer to him, and his grip tightened. “You should get in line before they close.”

The brunet of the group frowned. “You said you’d save us a spot.”

“That’s cheating,” Bill said. He indicated the people only he could see standing behind us. “These folks had to wait a long time.”

Bill’s muscles were stiff, as if he were ready to spring on these guys. I had no idea what was going on, but I had a feeling I was the prize in this fight. I watched the eyes of a blue-eyed blond who hadn’t spoken yet. He was staring at the Ferris wheel on the ground, taking in the broken seats and splintered beams. In fact, none of the three men looked up at the sky. They pretended to share Bill’s delusion, but they saw what I saw—a dilapidated, abandoned boardwalk.

The brunet—who seemed to be the leader—sighed. “Fine. We’ll get in the back of the line.”

They stepped in between two rotted poles and posed in relaxed positions, as if ready to wait for a long period of time. Bill’s muscles relaxed, and he turned us away to face the ride.

Behind us, one of the men laughed, then stopped suddenly as if hushed.

For every step we took forward in the line, the others took two. In a few minutes, they’d caught up to us.

I honestly didn’t know what to do or who was more dangerous. Bill had my arm in an iron lock. I might have twisted free and run before, but now these other men were behind us. I’d been biding my time, trying to figure out what game Katy was playing with me by sending Buffalo Bill out to keep me occupied. Now this.

So far, the three men hadn’t done anything to let me know if they were working for Katy. And if so, why would she send out opposing groups when she already had me captured or stalled?

“Forty-nine, fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two!” Bill said, triumphant. “Only fifty-two more people ahead of us!”

“Hey, Bill,” Blondie said. “That’ll take at least another hour. Zoey has someplace to be, you know.”

Ah. So, Katy had sent Olaf the Conqueror to get me, but his own delusions had kept him from bringing me back in a timely manner. So, she sent these jokers to get me.

At least, I hoped that was all they were there to do. Still, I couldn’t go after Katy in person until I found Gris. Katy was too much for me on my own—we’d already proved that.

Bill put a possessive arm around me. “Zoey wants to ride the Ferris wheel. Then we’re having ice cream.”

The third guy, who had a stubby soul patch, exchanged a look with me, then cracked his knuckles in a comical way that almost made me laugh. He seemed to be serious, oblivious to how it made him look like a thug in a forties black-and-white movie.

Both of the other men moved in closer with the knuckle cracker. I’d have taken a step back to stay out of the way of what was bound to be a pie fight with fists, but Bill wrapped one arm around my upper chest so tight I couldn’t even scratch myself.

The first blow to fly came from Brunet. He was, after all, the leader. Bill took the punch in the face with only a small flinch—a flinch that slipped his arm up a few inches, putting me in a stranglehold. He flung me out of the way of the next punch, but he retained his hold around my esophagus and twisted our bodies to the side.

While I appreciated my pal Bill using his own flesh as a barrier, I did not appreciate the sparkly things dancing in front of my eyes when he cut off my oxygen supply. I slapped at his forearm to try to get the message across, since my voicebox was no longer a viable form of communication. He ignored me and swatted away a kick to his stomach and an elbow in his face, both with his free hand.

If I hadn’t been so busy taking tiny sips of air every time his grip loosened for a second, I might have admired the agility in such a large man.

Whether he realized I was suffocating or it was simply dumb luck, I didn’t know, but Bill shifted his arm a few inches down, and I gulped in deep breaths until the sparkles faded. The fighting continued. I managed glimpses here and there as my captor tossed me around.

I examined the arm across my chest. He’d moved it within teeth range. I prepared to bite, and he flung me to avoid getting kicked in the jaw. I got a look and realized one of the guys was down, Blondie was attacking, and the guy with the soul patch was fighting someone else.

Someone every bit as tall as Bill, if not taller. Someone whose skin was dark as midnight and had eyes touched with a red glow.

Bill turned the other way again, and I saw Gris leaning against a pole, holding my phone against the length of his body.

I nearly wept. Gris had called for help, and Darius had come.

Blondie went down hard. I heard his body thunk when it dropped. Bill relaxed his hold on me, and my feet finally found purchase on the ground.

Darius held Soul Patch two feet off the ground, staring him down. “Where’s the girl?”

The kid shook his head. “We weren’t going to hurt her. Katy just wanted us to bring her upstairs.”

“Where?” Darius shook the guy like a tablecloth full of crumbs.

Apparently, whatever hold Katy had on the guy before was gone. More likely because she didn’t want him anymore and not because Darius had scared her out of him. Soul Patch lifted his arm and pointed up the boardwalk.

“She’s above the salt water taffy shop,” he said. “Please. I came here with my friends to go surfing. I don’t even know what’s happening.” His face crumpled and he blubbered, no longer coherent.

Darius dropped him, and the guy scuttled out of the way. When the mothman turned his attention in our direction, even I was a little afraid. And he still looked moderately human, since it was daylight.

“Let her go,” he said. His voice was cool and calm.

Bill tensed. “We’re riding the Ferris wheel.”

“She doesn’t want to ride the Ferris wheel.”

Bill squeezed his arm around me. “I don’t give a shit
what
she wants
.
She promised.”

He swung around with me and pushed his way through all the imaginary people in line, grunting and shoving as he went. When he made it to the front, he gave the imaginary attendant the imaginary tickets, then tucked me under his arm and climbed the pile of rubble, heading toward the tallest spot.

Holy hell.
I’m Faye Wray
,
and King Kong is climbing the Empire State building with me
.

From the pier, I hadn’t realized how high the garbage was. Even without being Ferris-wheel height, it was at least a story or two. He threw me over his shoulder so he could use both hands to climb. Darius was a few steps behind us.

I held my arms out to him and he tugged hard. My legs climbed the front of Buffalo Bill, while my arms grabbed the outstretched hands of Mount Mothman. Darius pulled me free before Bill realized what was going on.